Patrick Lee, the man in charge of overseeing the merger transition, said this week that there would likely be no savings in the initial years of the merger but rather later into the process. The Liberals campaigned on a plan to merge nine of the 10 health authorities into one, something they said would save $13 million a year immediately.

“That will be there, but it’s just going to take a longer path to get there,” said Glavine. “That’s what I realize as health minister now.”

He said “it certainly wasn’t clear before arriving in the Department of Health and Wellness” that the election promise probably wasn’t doable.

“People are there with, in fact, very generous severance packages at the moment, not ones that I, as minister, would be comfortable putting in place.”

The plan now is to take advantage of attrition over five to 10 years, said Glavine, as opposed to handing out several pink slips or offering buyouts.

“We have an aging workforce, and attrition over the next five to eight years will look after it,” he said.

“I see a little bit of that short-term requirement to make sure that everything is running well as the system undergoes the change, but over the long term, no question there will, indeed, be savings.”

Opposition members, not surprisingly, lambasted the government for breaking a key election promise.

“I guess (Glavine) is confirming it was just another meaningless political promise,” said Tory Leader Jamie Baillie.

“It just seems odd that at a time when we have mice in our hospitals that they can’t find savings at the top.”

Baillie said the Liberals would have been better off not making the promise “until they knew what they were talking about.”

New Democrat health critic Dave Wilson said the Liberals are not as they advertised during the election.

“This could take up to 10 years before they see any savings, if they see any at all,” said Wilson.

“They’ve indicated that there’s a cost to this amalgamation, and that concerns me.”

He said he would rather be seeing plans for improved long-term care, more collaborative emergency centres and improved home-care support.

Despite the difficulty to deliver on the campaign promise, Glavine said he remains confident that the plan is the right one. He reiterated his preference for the new board to be based in Truro, but Glavine said it would be a small staff of fewer than a dozen people that could possibly set up in the Colchester East Hants Health Care Centre.

As for the person who will run that board, he said it is not a foregone conclusion the provincial CEO will come from the existing group of authority CEOs. People will have the chance to apply, Glavine said.